Chapter 6: You're Never Gonna Fit In Much, Kid
The first person to notice he's a little worse for the wear is Ms. Epstein. She's been assigning him smaller comic projects to help him practice with his framing and design and to sort of solidify his style, and this newest one is to portray a scene accurately without using any dialogue or something. She's been kind of letting on that she's worried, but she hasn't outright said anything, which Kenny appreciates.
He's been stuck all week. She assigned it to him on Monday after class, and it's now Saturday night and he still has no fucking idea what he's going to do. There isn't a consequence attached to it, but he's got this weird thing where he doesn't want to disappoint her, if that makes sense.
Kenny walks in his front door, tired and hot and sweaty after helping Butters rake his yard (and having his hand down Butters' pants again). Karen's on the couch watching Cupcake Wars, something she does solely when she and Kenny are the only people in the house.
"Hey," she smiles. "Wanna sit and watch? This vegan twat is making red velvet—Frenchie's gonna flip."
Kenny laughs and nods. He goes upstairs to grab his science book out of his bag before coming down and settling into his homework. Science isn't even remotely interesting to him, and the fact that he's taking a whole advanced class about it… yeah, he's not doing great with it. Mostly he just copies Butters' homework when he can, but Butters is being a wang about it lately.
Like, he gets Cs on his own with this shit, okay?
"You get Cs anyway," Karen frowns. "If you're getting them in AP classes, either the classes are shitty or you're actually kind of adept." He gets a brief flash of himself being all smart and shit, like Kyle, in argyle sweaters and giant glasses (even though Kyle owns neither) and getting to go to school somewhere away from here so he can be all academic.
He's not sure if he likes that. He's not smart. Like, even if he was, he's pretty sure he wouldn't be good at it, like Kyle or Cartman are.
Kenny sinks lower into his book. He stares at the pages, but they fail to make sense. He reads the words, understands what they mean on their own, but every time he tries to put it all together, his brain malfunctions and he ends up getting pissed off.
It's like that time Kevin tried to read the instructions on the back of a box of pasta-roni and threw it across the room.
Speak of the devil—no sooner has Kenny started scratching down the answers to the review questions at the end of the chapter does Kevin come in the front door, still smoking a cigarette and wearing a ratty denim vest over one of their dad's old Def Leppard shirts.
"What's up, cunts?" Kevin asks as he shuts the door.
"You know someone's gonna shoot you one day, right?" Karen asks, eyebrows high on her forehead as Kevin smacks Kenny upside the head so he'll move down the couch and make room.
"I've already come to terms with the fact that I'm gonna go out like James Dean," he says and kicks his boots up on their rickety coffee table.
"Just don't do it in the truck," Kenny mutters, which makes Karen bark out a laugh and Kevin just look at him with what only can be defined as 'rage face'. It's not full-blown quite yet, but it's enough to get a flare of nerves going in Kenny's gut.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Kevin asks and grabs Kenny's book from him. "Shit, this is fucking heavy."
"With knowledge," Kenny says, unable to hide his smirk. "I'm doing my science homework, dickbag, give it back."
"Ugh," Kevin pulls a disgusted face and dumps the book back on Kenny's lap. "Fucking faggot."
"How, Kevin," Kenny snaps back. "How does doing my homework somehow make me a faggot."
Kevin snorts and jabs his thumb into a bruise on Kenny's ribs (that he fucking well knows is there, the sadistic prick), and Kenny lets out a little whimper. He's already sore all over from helping Butters earlier, and he's got a tiredness settling over him that he can feel in his bones. He's really not in the mood for Kevin's shit. Really, really not in the mood for it.
"Aw," Kevin coos and jabs him again. "What, you've got some pain in your lady parts or something?"
"Kevin, fuck off!" Karen shouts. "We're watching TV, you piece of shit!"
Kevin is stunned into silence, like most people are when they hear Karen yell. She's mostly calm, the most zen person Kenny knows. He doesn't know how she gets through life without anything bothering her, but there it is. Kevin turns to the TV, still silent, and Kenny watches as confusion and disgust twists up on and mars his face.
"The fuck is this shit?" he asks.
"Cupcake Wars," Karen replies tersely.
"Aw, fuck," Kevin laughs. "This is the one—it is! This is the one with that fucking Limey polesmoker, isn't it?"
"Kevin!" Karen shouts again. "That's not okay!"
"I know," Kevin nods. "Guy's a fucking cocksucker, dude. Freaks me out too."
"Kevin," Karen implores again.
"What?"
"Enough with the slurs!"
"What slurs am I using, Karen."
"Kevin, are you fucking serious? Can we just watch TV without you being an ignorant fuckhole for, like, ten minutes please?"
"Oh, cut your fucking liberal hippie bullshit," Kevin rolls his eyes, voice louder and more annoyed. Kenny's already tired, and the argument isn't helping. He hunches over and pulls his hood up over his head, trying to block out everything and breathe evenly, in and out. That ugly tar monster is back in his chest, slopping around and hardening in his lungs, suffocating his heart and making him feel a little like he's about to spontaneously combust. His entire brain feels like it's on fire. They're still talking but Kenny can't hear it. All he can process is white noise, and he thinks he may pass out if he stays down here.
"Hey," Kevin barks as Kenny tosses his book on the floor and makes a break for the stairs. He doesn't hear Kevin follow him, which he's grateful for, but he locks himself in his room anyway. He wrenches open his dresser drawer and pulls a joint out of an old Altoid tin, lighting up and taking in a deep, terrified lungful of smoke.
He collapses on his bed, already feeling a little better, and smokes the whole thing by himself, hoping it'll put him to sleep.
Normally, this kind of thing would find Kenny hurling himself in front of a train or slicing himself up in the bathroom or putting a bullet through his head, but he doesn't want to do that with Karen and Kevin right downstairs. Not that they'd remember, or that Kevin at least would care, but he doesn't want to put them through seeing him lifeless in a puddle of his own blood. He'd rather just be able to die without anyone ever finding him.
He'd trade immortality for the ability to just disappear any day.
He grabs his big art folder, the one Ms. Epstein gave him to keep his big comic paper in, a pencil and spreads out on a clean patch on his floor. He's not going to make a comic, but he has to do something to keep himself from breaking down and killing himself anyway.
He has a test on Tuesday, one that he actually thinks he might do well on. He doesn't want to risk being dead for a month again.
So he just starts drawing. He doesn't know where this is going or what he's doing with it, but what he ends up making is a monster—a teeny-tiny tar monster to be exact. It's all globby and drippy and it's got wings and about sixty eyes and as he draws, Kenny starts constructing a little story for it in his head.
He draws a small, scared-looking child beside it, and like that, it clicks.
He stays up well into the night, illustrating a wordless story about a little boy being overtaken by this little demon, ending with the boy dead and cold on the floor, and the tar monster fat and happy. There's no color—not that Kenny has any colored pencils or markers to do that anyway—and Kenny sort of likes it that way.
When he's finally done, the sun is long since up on Sunday morning, and he passes out cold on his bed for what feels like a decade.
He doesn't eat, just smokes as much weed as possible, sneaks a few beers, and occasionally leaves his room to pee, when needed.
He's not feeling as shitty as before, just kind of empty. He looks at his pages of art from time to time, numb and void of any thoughts. It's like looking into a mirror—you recognize yourself, see the flaws, acknowledge the good, and just sort of can't do anything but stare, wondering if what you're seeing is really what's there.
"Oh, Kenny," Ms. Epstein breathes when he brings the pages to her at lunch that Monday. She puts a hand over her heart as she scans over the pages. "Kenny, these are breathtaking, but very… very disturbing. Just—I just want to give you a hug. Do you mind if I give you a hug?"
"Um," Kenny shifts his weight from foot to foot, adjusting his bag over his shoulder as he does. "Yeah, I guess so."
For a thin hippie from out west, she's got a suffocating hug. She crushes Kenny against her and rubs her hand over his back.
"Kenny, if you ever, ever have anything you want to talk about," she says as she pulls away. "You do not hesitate to come to me."
"Okay," Kenny frowns a little and starts shaking his head, but Ms. Epstein just puts her bony hand on his cheek and gives him a sympathetic smile.
"You are a kind, caring individual," she says. "And if you have something that's bothering you, you deserve to be heard. We are so much more than the things that make us feel small and helpless."
Kenny screws his eyes shut and shakes his head. He's not going to cry—he's just not—but fuck, that hits him hard. He throws his arms around her and buries his face in her long, stringy brown hair, still not crying, but fuck, it's hard. She rubs her hand over his back again, comforting him in a way Kenny suspects a mother would her child. It's strange, he knows, but he'll take whatever he can get.
He's feeling just shitty enough to want to tell her everything, and just fucking frightened enough to keep his mouth shut. What if she tells his parents? Or worse, what if she tells him everything's okay? So he keeps his mouth shut and waits until the feeling is small enough yet again to stuff back down and keep quiet.
"Do you have anywhere to be right now?" she asks, and Kenny shakes his head, still holding onto her like he'll fall through the floor if he lets go. "Would you like some tea? I just brought some of my good ginger tea, if you'd like."
Kenny doesn't know why, but he nods and goes to sit at a nearby table. Ms. Epstein goes to the little office she shares with the conjoined art room next door and returns with two steaming cups of gingery tea. Kenny blows across the top, not saying anything, and takes a sip. It's hot, not enough to burn his tongue, but just enough to warm him thoroughly. He pushes back his hood and rolls up his sleeves, and it somehow prompts a satisfied hum out of Ms. Epstein.
"There's your face," she says, and Kenny suppresses a massive eye roll. That's what everyone says to him when they see him with his hood down—it's not like the hoods on his sweatshirts are at all concealing as far as his face goes. "You look a little haggard… do you want some trail mix or something?"
"I'm all right," Kenny shakes his head, hoping his stomach doesn't rumble too loudly in disagreement. He keeps sipping his tea and looking off to the side, not wanting to make eye contact and feeling stupidly vulnerable with his whole head exposed like this. Ms. Epstein waits for a little bit before she leans back in her chair, legs crossed and hands clasped neatly in her lap.
"You know," she begins. "Art really is a magnificent thing. Doesn't matter the medium—oils, pastels, pencils, markers… even written words and music. It's all a means of expression, of coping with what we can't handle otherwise. Artists have the remarkable ability to capture what we're feeling and translate it into something else, and if we're lucky, we put translate it into something someone else can see or hear or read and understand, that might give them even a fraction of the comfort it gives us to create."
"I like guys."
And there it is. Hanging over them, suspended in space for all eternity, like it's trapped inside one of those big white balloons you see in all the old comics.
I
like
guys.
Ms. Epstein seems to be a little stunned by the confession, and it makes Kenny hide his face in his hands. This is it—he's totally exposed, all his cards laid out on the table before him, and he doesn't like it at all.
"Oh," is all he gets as a response, and he's just about to grab his bag and leave when she keeps on going. "Well… is that a problem?"
He looks up from his hands and locks eyes with her. She looks very sincere, very frank, and like she wants nothing more than to help. It's strange. People don't look at him like that too often. He squirms a little in his seat before folding his arms over the desk and resting his chin on them, blowing a chunk of his hair out of his eyes just so it's clear just how dejected (and badly in need of a hair cut) he is.
"If my parents find out, I'm fucked," he says softly, and then winces when he realizes that he cursed. "Sorry."
"It's all right," she smiles a little. "I've heard the word before… Do you mind me asking why you don't want your parents to find out?"
Kenny shakes his head, "It's just not okay with them. I promise, I'm not being a pissy little faggot about that—they'd throw me out on the street."
"Okay, wow," Ms. Epstein blinks. "Maybe don't toss around the slurs. Now, we can talk about this if you want—"
"I don't!" Kenny snaps a little, and reels back when he realizes he's shouting. He takes a shaky breath and looks up at the ceiling. "I want a fucking… magic pill that'll take all of this away. I want a fucking reboot button on my life that I can just press and I'm born with normal parents in a normal town with normal people and a normal body and a normal brain and just a normal life. That's all I want. For once, in just one aspect of my life I thought I'd be normal. Nope—that had to go and get fucked up too."
Ms. Epstein is sitting with her hand on her cheek and looking rather helpless. Kenny can't help it though. Someone wants to know how he feels? Fine. This is how he feels.
"Kenny, 'normal' is a very relative term," she shakes her head. "And part of life for some people is learning to be okay—"
"No," Kenny frowns. "I don't want to be okay with this. I don't need anyone's 'It Gets Better' bullshit about this. I don't want to learn how to deal with it, I want it to go away..." he trails off.
But that doesn't look like it's going to happen, is what he wants to say. That doesn't look like it's going to happen because every time he kisses Butters or touches him or even just spends time with him, he knows that it's never going to go away. He's always going to get butterflies in his stomach when he sees Butters smile, and he's always going to feel this insane sense of accomplishment and giddiness at that blissful face he gets just after he comes.
It's like he gets to feel good for five whole minutes before reality comes crashing back down and he realizes what he's done. He remembers that it's not normal, that he doesn't have super cool progressive parents who are cool with him being different, that he doesn't have a place he can go in his mind where this is all okay.
He's a freak of nature, in every aspect. Once upon a time, that didn't sound so bad.
Now he can't think of anything worse.
He thanks Ms. Epstein quickly for the tea, but makes a hasty exit. He knows he'll have to see her tomorrow, that storming out is insanely anticlimactic, but hey, he's partially gay. He's entitled to a few tantrums, right?
Kenny doesn't bother attempting to sign out for early leave. He doesn't have a ride and he's too pissy to be in a car with anyone right now anyway. He figures he'll probably hang out under the bleachers at the field until he can catch the bus with Karen. Otherwise he'll get in trouble for still being on campus or something.
He walks by the football field and sees the track team practicing hurdles. Gary's on track, because of course he is, but surprisingly that doesn't deter Kenny from sitting and watching them. The coach looks a little suspicious, but Gary spots Kenny just in time to go over and have a few words with the coach. She sighs, gives him a stern look, but tosses her head toward Kenny anyway.
Gary gets up to him in a ridiculously quick amount of time and plops down next to him, all sickening smiles and sunny dispositions.
"Hey, man," he beams.
"Fuck off," Kenny scowls and turns to face the world before him.
"No thanks," Gary shrugs brightly. "What's with the sourpuss?"
"The what?" Kenny cocks an eyebrow. Whatever it is, it sounds dirty.
"That's a rough translation of 'what crawled up your ass and died'," Gary explains, smile persistent.
Kenny screws up his eyebrows and gives Gary a look before he starts laughing a little. Gary curses like a kid, like his tongue is heavy can't quite form comfortably over the words yet. It's funny to Kenny, at least a little bit, because he's been cursing since he's been speaking. And he can definitely hear Stan's inflections in just about every curse word that passes Gary's lips—like, they say 'ass' the exact same way.
It's funny.
"Man, what are you doing up here?" Kenny asks and pulls his cigarettes out of his pocket. Gary grabs them before Kenny can even get to looking for his lighter and gives him a stern look.
"We're on school property," he says. "You're going to get yourself arrested."
"Fuck," Kenny laughs and shakes his head, running his fingers through his hair and giving a scratch. "Will you just cut the crap and tell me what you want?"
"I just want to make sure you're okay, dude," Gary's face pinches into a frown. Kenny sighs—Gary even says 'dude' like Stan does.
"Just… shit," Kenny says, like it explains anything. Gary nods, pretending that it does, and fiddles with Kenny's cigarettes in his fingers.
"I know how you feel," he says. "Hey, the bad stuff doesn't last, though. You might feel like garbage right now, but there's calm after the storm, you know?"
Kenny screws his eyes shut and rubs them with the heels of his hands.
"Man, how do you do it," he asks softly. "Like, Butters I get. There's not a person in the world who didn't see that shit coming. And Stan, fine. He's always been kind of a 'mo. But you? Like, no offense, I'm not questioning it or anything, but… don't you ever just wish you were normal?"
Gary looks at him for a moment, blinking his big green eyes and looking off for a second before he replies, "Well, normal's a relative ter—"
"No," Kenny says firmly. "Don't feed me that shit. Just be straight with me for a minute. You can't tell me there's not one fucking part of you that just hates that you like sucking dick."
Kenny's not expecting a reaction—at least, not the one he gets. Gary crushes Kenny's pack of cigarettes in his hand and rests his forehead against his knuckles. He's taking deep breaths in and out and trying to get to a hold of himself, it looks like.
"Dude, keep it to yourself," he says softly, finally looking up and around to make sure no one's listening before he scoots a bit closer and leans in.
"Of course there is…" he continues, quieter than before, "more than a part. Knowing what I could lose? Kenny my entire family would disown me. I'd be kicked out of my church. I wouldn't have a place to live or anywhere to go. My entire family is Mormon, and Stan's the only real friend I've got in this town who'd help me out if something like that happened. Of course I hate that there's something about me that puts my life in such Jeopardy, but—"
Gary takes a shaky breath and rubs at the bridge of his nose, "But it is a part of me, just like my family, and just like being a Mormon. And Stan makes me happy, but sometimes—" he pauses again, swallowing a lump in his throat before he rasps out, "Yeah, sometimes I wish there was a prayer strong enough to take this away. Sometimes you get those thoughts, like… you'd do anything, right?"
Gary looks at him and gives him a more sullen smile this time. Kenny's stunned into silence, wondering if he's heard all of that right. Gary's so upbeat and positive, Kenny always finds himself wondering if there's any sincere feeling under there, or if he just pretends it doesn't exist. Kenny runs his fingers through his hair and just gives a nod.
"Fuckin' A, dude," he says. "Y'know, you're all right."
"Ha," Gary laughs, embittered and cold. "Because I have bad thoughts, like you? I never understood how feeling crummy is supposed to make me all right."
He slaps the cigarettes back into Kenny's hand and stands.
"I'll see you later," he says, and with that takes the steps two by two back down to the field. Kenny feels kind of icy as he pulls a cigarette out of the pack and slips it between his lips. All this new shit considered, he doesn't really care about the prospect about getting expelled for smoking on school premises right now.
He clears off when the bell rings, just so the coach won't get suspicious, and goes to hang out under the bleachers instead. He smokes two more cigarettes and doodles a bit in his notebook, but for the most part tries to get rid of the disgusting feeling in his gut. He can't, though. He can't. It's always there, ever present, and it only gets worse when he realizes he's sketching a very familiar likeness of Butters' big doofy mug, smiling that big doofy smile.
Kenny flips the notebook closed and heads back toward the building, trying not to smoke another cigarette. If anything, he doesn't want to talk to Kevin yet, or ask him to buy him another pack.
He walks by the theater and pushes the door open. It's empty, but he can see the sets for the play, minimalistic as they are, all propped up on the back wall and ready to be used. They play is still about three weeks away, but Butters is already starting to get stressed about it. Wendy's busy with being in the play, being in every other club under the sun, and also with maintaining her sterling GPA, so she handed the reins over to Butters on this production.
It's driving the poor kid insane.
Kenny goes up to the stage and starts poking around a bit. There really is no one in there—he's all alone. He sits on the very edge of the stage, right next to the ancient boom box the club uses for practice. Kenny checks to make sure it's plugged in, and pushes play.
It's a mix CD, Kenny gathers, mostly of old soul music. There's a lot of Aretha Franklin, which Kenny kind of digs. He picked up an old box of tapes and CDs at a swap meet once, and it was mostly soul music and a bunch of other shit from the 70s. It's this kind of stuff that gets Kenny to tapping on his legs, feeling the rhythm coursing through him, gets him to mouthing 'chain-chain-chaaaaain' like he's not just a skinny piece of white trash who can't accept the fact that he likes guys.
Because it is a fact.
He likes guys.
Like it's fucking on cue, a familiar tune comes over the speakers and Kenny grins. He hops up, as if on cue, and starts in right along with her, 'What you want—baby, I got it', because sometimes, when all else fails, he can pretend he's someone else, singing about someone else's problems. He dances around like a white boy with a club foot, he knows he does, but grace is not his department. He doesn't sound so bad, though. He hasn't gotten the chance to sing much of late, and God only knows what his dad would do if he heard him singing this stuff.
"R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me," he belts out, probably a little more loudly than he should, but he's already committed, damn it. "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, take out T-C-P."
"It's actually 'take care, TCB'."
Kenny whirls around, eyes wide and heart beating a thousand times a minute. Butters is standing behind him, arms folded and looking about as smugly amused as Kenny's ever seen anyone look.
"The fuck are you doing in here?" he asks.
"I was workin' on some club stuff," Butters frowns. "I got sixth period off, so I came here to do drama stuff before the rehearsal starts."
"Oh," Kenny coughs a little and flips his hood back up over his head, since apparently he was dancing so hard it just sort of… flew back.
"You're good," Butters smiles.
"Butters…"
"I think you capture the voice of Aretha Franklin real well," Butters continues, smile broadening when he sees Kenny flush. "Aw, come on. I like your singin' voice. I mean, you hum all the time when you help me at home, an' when you help the fellas with makin' the sets an' everything. Why didn't you audition for the play?"
"Uh," Kenny tugs on his sweater strings. "Flamboyant theatricality isn't really my style."
Butters raises his eyebrows, "Kenny, I just walked in on you singin' and dancin' to Aretha Franklin, that is the biggest lie you've ever told me."
"Fine," Kenny snaps. "I just didn't want to, okay? Can we, like, not talk about this right now? Or ever? I'm just, like… never mind. Just, not gonna talk about it."
"Okay," Butters nods, smile gone and now looking like a kicked puppy. Kenny rolls his eyes and puts his hands on his hips. He doesn't want to talk anymore. Over the last two hours he's said more than he has in the last two years. He just wants to close the book and be done with his feelings today.
"What time does rehearsal start?" Kenny asks.
"Ugh, three-thirty," Butters groans and goes to sit down on the edge of the stage. He pushes the pause button on the boom box, and Kenny goes to sit beside him. "I'm just so tired, reckon all I wanna do is go home an' sleep."
"Sleep's good," Kenny concurs and pulls his backpack over to them. "Hey, I've got some materials to return, while I have you here."
"Aw, come on," Butters rolls his eyes and laughs as Kenny takes a few of Butters' magazines out of his bag and hands them to him. "Kenny, we're at school."
"So?" Kenny shrugs. "There was some stuff on the bottom one that I kind of steered clear of."
Butters frowns and looks at it, flipping through the pages and coming into contact with something on the centerfold. He rubs it on his fingers and laughs a little.
"It's just lube, you're okay," he says.
"Why's there lube on it?" Kenny asks, not sure if he wants to know the answer. Butters just looks at him with a blank sort of expression before he blinks a few times and looks back at the magazine. He mumbles something, and Kenny has to ask him to repeat it several times before he gets Butters to admit, "I use lube when I p-play with myself."
Kenny doesn't know why this confession gets him so uncomfortably turned on—maybe the thought of Butters reaching into his pants and getting himself to make all those nice noises is just too much to bear right now. Plus, Butters is looking intensely ashamed of himself right now, which leads Kenny to believe it's not just Butters slicking up his hand and going at it either.
"What do you do?" he asks, voice low and a little thick. He checks his watch. There's still half an hour before school lets out—more than enough time to get to what's making Butters blush so hard. He shouldn't care, he knows he shouldn't, but there's some sick part of him that wants to know everything about it.
"Ke-Kenny," Butters says softly as Kenny's hand comes to rest right beside his leg.
"You can tell me," he says, mouth very dry and throat very scratchy. "I just grab my dick and go. Sometimes I steal some of Karen's hand lotion if she's not home. Mostly I just spit in my hand, though."
"That's it?" Butters asks. "You never even stuck your fingers up your butt or anything?"
"Ew, why?" Kenny grimaces. "Shit's gay."
"And asking another fella how he likes to handle himself isn't?" Butters points out. Kenny frowns, but scoots closer to him anyway, hand moving from its spot on the stage and up to where it can trace over Butters' soft, warm cheek.
He leans in to kiss him—lightly, though, barely even a touch—and grins when Butters melts into it.
"I got this toy," he admits softly. "It vibrates. An' if I stick it in me an' jerk off at the same time, I come real hard. Heck, one time I didn't even need to touch myself. I-I got it goin' just right a-an' I came buckets."
"Fuck," Kenny breathes, resting his forehead against Butters' temple. "How'd you manage to get a toy, dude?"
"Oh, um," Butters flushes further. "I-I kinda maybe went down on a guy who works at one of those shops, an' he just sorta let me buy it."
Kenny doesn't know why he feels a little pang in his stomach when he thinks of Butters going down on someone he doesn't even know, but he stamps it out quickly.
"So yeah," he says, "That got me pretty hard."
"Yeah?" Butters pulls away enough to look down at Kenny's crotch. "No kidding… how'd I do that?"
"There's something on the planet that apparently makes you come more than you already do," Kenny laughs a little. "I'm not even sure how that's possible."
Butters gives him what can only be termed a salacious looking grin back and leans in close to Kenny's ear.
"Maybe I'll show you sometime," he mutters, and Kenny honest to god whimpers. Butters only grins further and slides off the edge of the stage, moving so he's in between Kenny's legs. He undoes his fly and pulls Kenny's erection out of his underwear, giving Kenny an impish look before he sucks him into his mouth.
Butters always manages to get him in the weirdest places, too. The theater, an alleyway, the unisex handicapped bathroom in Country Kitchen Buffet… There's nowhere that's too strange for Butters, and Kenny actually doesn't mind it.
Plus, he's starting to last longer than he was a few weeks ago. Probably because Butters gives head like it's going out of style. Like, Kenny loves going down on girls—actually loves it—and for a while it was all he'd do. He wonders if Butters is the same, only with cock.
When Butters finishes, he hops back up on the stage and grabs the water bottle out of his backpack while Kenny does his pants up again. He swishes the water around in his mouth and swallows it back, offering Kenny a sheepish grin when he realizes he's being stared at.
"What?" he asks.
"Is it hard?" Kenny replies. "Sucking dick, I mean. Like, how difficult is it?"
"You met some of the people who suck dick?" Butters laughs a little. "Reckon it doesn't take too much brain power."
Kenny rolls his eyes, even though he can't quite wipe the smile off his face. Butters always leaves him incapacitated when it comes to his bad feelings. He thinks if his life was just a constant of Butters making him come, he'd never be sad again.
"I wanna try," he admits softly, and that's enough to stop Butters in his tracks. He's hard, Kenny can see it, and he's all pink in the face and looking to be at that point where he'd do just about anything anyone asked him to do.
"Suh-sucking me off?" Butters stammers, and Kenny nods. He does want to try it. Kind of badly, actually. When he sees Butters' dick, there's always this little part of him that wants to know what it'd be like to have him in his mouth. He pushes himself off the stage and goes to stand between Butters' legs, just like Butters had done to him. He draws his fingers over Butters' thighs, and looking up at him in earnest asks, "Can I?"
"Uh, yeah," Butters laughs, a little desperate and Kenny smiles. He likes getting Butters all riled up and horny—really likes it. He mirrors Butters' previous actions as best he can, undoing his pants and pulling him out of his underwear, and all that stuff. He kind of balks when he looks down and remembers that Butters is, uh… well, he's a little bigger than most. It's probably not a good training dick is all, but Kenny's up for the challenge.
Maybe.
"Uh," Kenny can't wipe the smile off his face. "Okay, this is happening."
"Kenny, you don't ha—" he seizes when Kenny runs the tip of his tongue gently through his slit. Kenny takes it as a good sign and ducks to take his head into his mouth, keeping his hand moving slowly on the bottom. It's weird—oh, it's so weird—but he thinks that he may like it. When Butters whines a little and runs his fingers through Kenny's hair, he knows beyond shadow of a doubt that yeah, he likes it a lot.
"Tha-that's good," Butters breathes, trying to be encouraging. Kenny nods, humming a little, because he has a dick, okay? He knows what feels good. It's not like the trial and error he went through when he was first going down on girls. He tries to conjure up memories of all the best blowjobs he's had and attempts to recreate them. It's probably clumsy as all fuck, but Butters is whining and pulling on his hair and Kenny is absolutely loving it.
And Butters appears to be just as into it. When Kenny has to pull back and catch his breath, Butters throws back his head and starts throwing around some pretty filthy words. Like, it doesn't surprise Kenny that Butters is a talker, but he's never heard Butters say half the words he's saying right now.
It doesn't take Butters long once Kenny gets back to it. Kenny's getting the hang of it too, starting to experiment with his tongue and sucking and it's apparently enough to get Butters bucking up and groaning like Kenny's killing him in the most pleasurable way possible. He's fucking up a little too hard though, and when he comes it kind of makes Kenny gag, and there ends up being way more come on his face than he ever thought there would be.
"Shit," Butters sighs, running his fingers through Kenny's hair still, entirely satisfied, like he's petting his prized hunting dog. He looks at Kenny's face and smiles, "You've got a little somethin'—" he points to a spot on his chin and laughs when Kenny sticks out his tongue and wipes his hands over his chin. Butters grabs his little travel pack of tissues out of his bag and hands one to Kenny.
"Dickhead," Kenny mutters and cleans himself up.
"Hey," Butters laughs, pretending to be a little offended, before he tucks himself back into his pants and goes back to playing with Kenny's hair. "Don't take this the wrong way," he says, "But you're real good at that."
Kenny shuts his eyes and chuckles a bit, heart thumping wildly when Butters returns the laugh and pulls Kenny into a kiss. They both taste like spunk, Kenny knows they do, but somehow that doesn't make him want to pull away and run. It's a good feeling, and he'll hang onto it for now, even if he can feel the bad lingering just under the surface.
Just as he gets to thinking that, oh god, he enjoyed sucking someone's dick, Butters tugs him closer and wraps his legs around Kenny's middle. He's so fucking warm, and he smells kind of lemony and really clean, a little like Kenny would expect sunshine to smell.
Fuck, that was gay. That was super gay.
Not that standing here, letting Butters suck on his face is any less gay, but whatever.
"Can we do that again?" Butters asks softly.
"Right now?" Kenny raises an eyebrow, and Butters laughs, holding Kenny by the front of the shirt and resting their foreheads together. They don't say anything though, just sort of let each other come down from their highs and kiss each other until they remember that they have other things to do.
"Hey, can I have some of that water?" Kenny asks. Butters nods and Kenny takes a generous swig out of the cool metal bottle. He watches Butters stuff the magazines into his big hulking school books in an attempt to hide them from anyone who might poke around in his bag and swishes the water around in his mouth, like he'd seen Butters do.
He can't get the taste completely off his tongue, though. Like, no matter what he does, it's going to be there, constantly reminding him that, yeah, he did this. And there's no escaping it.
That kind of freaks him out.
"Hey, do you need me today?" Kenny asks and sets the bottle back on the stage. Butters frowns a little.
"Not explicitly," he says. "Why, you're not gonna come?"
"I mean," Kenny runs his tongue over his lips. They're all swollen, he can feel it. "If you don't need me, I was gonna go—" He falters.
"Kenny, are you all right?" Butters asks, concerned now.
"I'm fine," Kenny shakes his head and pulls back. "I'm just gonna go get some air. I'll be back."
Kenny doesn't wait for Butters to respond before he sort of just turns on his heel and all but runs out. He left his bag there, so he can't really leave school or anything, but he can make a few rounds of the school and stick it out until rehearsal starts.
When school lets out, it's like someone opened the floodgates. A swarm of students starts pouring out of the building, some chatting excitedly, others just hurrying on their way to the busses or their cars to get home. Kenny passes by the vending machines right by the student store and pauses—Stan's mulling over the variety of chips and cookies in the machine, bobbing his head to the music pouring out of his big-ass Boeing headphones. Kenny hasn't really talked to him… mostly because he's being his normal self and just avoiding the uncomfortable conversation that's bound to take place, but he knows he can't keep running away forever.
Stan's one of the people on the planet who knows him best, after all—Stan knows way too many incriminating things about Kenny to walk away from this friendship alive. Kenny taps him on the shoulder and gives a wry smile when Stan jumps at being disturbed.
"Oh, hey dude," Stan says and pushes his headphones down around his neck. "Haven't seen you in a while."
"I know," Kenny nods and pulls his hood back up over his head. He gets the feeling that his hair's all wild from Butters pulling on it and petting it.
"Hey, dude, I never got to apologize for throwing you under the bus a while ago," Stan shoves his hands in his pockets. "I pretty much got my ass chewed out by everyone after you left, and they were right. It was pretty fucked up, so… I'm sorry."
"I think I just sucked Butters' dick," Kenny somehow says instead of 'Apology accepted, bro', and Stan's eyes go wide.
"Seriously?" he asks, and Kenny can't do anything but nod his head. He's had a dick in his mouth—he's one of those people now. "Dude, when did this happen?"
"If I tell you 'five minutes ago', do you promise not to judge me?" Kenny asks. Stan just nods his head and moves to grab Kenny by the shoulder.
"Are you okay, dude?" he raises his eyebrows, nodding to help Kenny along into an affirmative answer, but Kenny just shakes his head. "Did you not like it or something?"
"I did," Kenny replies hollowly. "That's the worst fucking part."
"Uh, I disagree, dude," Stan frowns as Kenny goes to sit on one of the benches nearby. "Liking it is the best part about sucking dick. 'Cause if you've gotta do something, you might as well like it."
Kenny lets out a choked sort of laugh and buries his face in his hands.
"Hey," Stan says and sits down beside him. "Dude, it's not the end of the world. I know your parents won't be thrilled, but who says they have to find out? You make it 'til you're eighteen and you move out. Home stretch, dude. And hey, if shit goes down, you can always live in Shelly's room if you need to. She won't care, she's at school."
Kenny just looks at Stan and blinks a few times. He's not sure what to think or what to say, and he doesn't know why, of anyone he's talked to today, Stan's the person that made him feel better. For once in his life, he just decides not to question it and lets it go. He wraps his arms around Stan's neck and gives him a hug, one of those ones that gets tighter and tighter as one person tries to suffocate the other.
"So, you and Butters," Stan says when he finally lets go.
"It's not anything, dude," Kenny rolls his eyes and stands. "We're just fooling around. It's not a big deal."
"I know," Stan nods, following suit, "I just think it's kinda funny."
"Why?" Kenny asks, cocking an eyebrow. Stan just shrugs, and Kenny doesn't like the stupid smile on his face. "Stan, why's it funny?"
Stan doesn't answer, and will probably keep that thought with him until the grave. He just gives Kenny a big smile and folds his arms.
"Man, it's gonna be nice to have someone else to talk to about this shit, man," Stan sighs and slings an arm over Kenny's shoulder. "Gary gets all squeamish about it, can't even ask me to suck his dick, so now I have to be a mind reader on top of everything else, and Butters doesn't know the meaning of shame, so he's useless… It'll be nice to have someone around who's as scared shitless as I am, you know?"
That, above anything else, makes Kenny smile the broadest.
Hey, so this chapter got done really quickly.
Title of the chapter from My Chemical Romance's lyrical masterpiece Teenagers.
Happy Friday, everyone!
